6 ms·

I like his point here "Google and Facebook are in the same business as the U.S. government’s National Security Agency. They collect a vast amount of informatio

I like his point here "Google and Facebook are in the same business as the U.S. government’s National Security Agency. They collect a vast amount of information about people, store it, integrate it and use it to predict individual and group behavior, which they then sell to advertisers and others." But I'd like to point out an important difference: Google doesn't have the authority to arrest someone (or incite someone else, like FBI or EPA, to arrest someone). The NSA does. Further, the NSA has a vested interest in arresting people to justify its existence.

mike_hearn 12y ago
The NSA cannot arrest people either. Hence the big hoohaa about whether they were tipping off the people who can. A bigger problem is not the NSA leading to arrests. The bigger problem is metadata driven drone strikes. That's a uniquely horrible phenomenon. Google and Facebook look like fluffy kittens in contrast. Though I wish Assange wouldn't continue confusing and deceiving people by claiming these companies sell your information to advertisers. I don't understand how such a trivially debunked idea has turned into a global meme/conspiracy theory.
- webjprgm 12y ago
  Google/Facebook don't have to sell your info to advertisers because the are advertisers. Either way it is used for commercial advantage.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    Yes, but so what? Would you prefer everyone had to pay for their services, meaning a) You need a credit card, excluding large chunks of the world population that doesn't have one b) Google/FB learn your real identity via the payment networks, verified to banking level I get that advertising is annoying. Regardless, painting it as some kind of scary privacy problem doesn't make sense and worse, muddies the water. People end up dumping tech companies into the same boat as governments even though they have hardly anything in common.
    - throwawayaway 12y ago
      It's more than annoying. It is a privacy problem. I would prefer people run their own services, decentralised. The tech companies are useful idiots.
      - robertfw 12y ago
        I think that we will get there eventually, but there is still plenty of work to be done - for it to work it needs to be mass market, which means it needs to Just Work. One project I've been meaning to delve into is https://sandstorm.io/ https://sandstorm.io/
    - tracker1 12y ago
      It's pretty creepy, when I look at a product on Amazon, and see SOME_PERSON that I follow on facebook/twitter posted a review of this item fairly prominently. I've never attached my twitter profile, or facebook profile to Amazon, but there it is/was. That's pretty damned creepy.
    - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
      I think it's outright dishonest to paint advertising as not a privacy problem. It's a huge portion of why ones every online movement is tracked in the first place. Google's entire gimmick is that they're better at stalking people than any other tech company on the planet, without "targeted" advertising they'd have long been irrelevant. Also, claiming you need a credit card to do things online is a great example of "not making sense and muddying the water". If Google/FB charged for their services there's still no reason they would need my address or any other identifying information- it's not like they're sending boxes to my door. On your last point; Tech companies and governments get put in the same boat for good reason- they actively work together on a regular basis. Even if the company is "compelled" to give the info- that's still only an issue because the companies are whoring and storing all the data they can get their hands on (for indefinite amounts of time).
  - declan 12y ago
    Google and Facebook offer platforms to advertisers. For instance, Facebook lets advertisers show ads to users of age X, working at company Y, in location Z, etc. (without disclosing their identities). This is completely different from selling your information, and the companies' privacy policies and practices reflect this. As mike_hearn says, these sorts of alarmist claims ("they're selling your info!") are easily debunked. And in this case they detract from the rest of Julian's essay, which is a shame because elsewhere he makes some good points.
- avoutthere 12y ago
  > metadata driven drone strikes How many of these have there been?
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    Nobody knows of course, but more than one for sure. The key words to use are "signature strike": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/signature-strikes-and-the_b_3575351.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/signature-s... https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secre... http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-gr...
- chestnut-tree 12y ago
  Google and Facebook may not sell personally identifiable information to advertisers, but they track users relentlessly and insatiably. Google, in particular, has it's tracking tentacles in every conceivable corner of the web: whether it's tracking school kids through Google Classroom, or tracking users through the entirety of an OS (ChromeOS), or tracking your behaviour on your Android smartphone - the list is endless. No, I don't think they do sinsiter things with your data but they have amassed (and continue to amass) an absolutely gargantuan volume of date about users. What Facebook and Google collect about you far exceeds a simple "advertising profile" of your likes. They know more about your online behaviour than you do. I've said this before, but Google omits basic facts in their privacy policy about the data they collect about you. Things like: how long they keep your data, whether the data is anonymised, whether your searches or activity are disassociated from your identity, and who sees your data inside the company. These are not minor or unreasonable questions to ask - they are exactly what you'd expect to find in a privacy policy (especially from a company that arguably tracks users more than anyone else online). Yet, Google does not answer any of these questions. Why do they get a free pass?
  - Stefanrio 12y ago
    > Why do they get a free pass? Because technology evolves faster than humans and most people have no idea what the services that they use are about.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    I guess it's a question of perspective. In the past few years I've been working a lot on Bitcoin, so I've become quite familiar with how the banking world works and what they collect and track about you. If you really think Google and Facebook "track users relentlessly and insatiably" then I suggest you take a deep breath, and then go review what banks do in the name of anti-money laundering. It makes social networks look like quasi anarchist chaos camps. I mean, you can tell Google and Facebook your name is literally anything - they aren't going to check. They barely even care beyond trying to nudge you away from picking pinkponies_78, so the search function works. Google isn't going to suddenly suspend your email account and demand you provide documentary proof of where your business is getting its income. WRT this: Google omits basic facts in their privacy policy about the data they collect about you I don't think they do: http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ Just go read that page and it covers a huge number of topics including things like "who sees your data inside the company". I'm sure you would want even more info, but these sites represent a trade off - earlier privacy policies were dinged (by governments, lol) for being too large and complex.
- rhino369 12y ago
  >A bigger problem is not the NSA leading to arrests. The bigger problem is metadata driven drone strikes. That's a uniquely horrible phenomenon. What is so horrible about using metadata to target drone strikes against people we already want to drone strike? That is just good intelligence collection.
  - yebyen 12y ago
    I suspect I'm going to get downvoted too, for saying it like this, but you obviously haven't seen any of the latest season of Homeland.
    - rhino369 12y ago
      I wish I hadn't, this season is bad.
      - yebyen 12y ago
        Yeah I'm with you on that, for the first couple of episodes I wasn't even convinced that it was really the same show... feels like a spinoff since they killed Brody
  - cesarbs 12y ago
    Read this and think about what you said: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/signature-strikes-and-the_b_3575351.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/signature-s...
  - bootload 12y ago
    "... What is so horrible about using metadata to target drone strikes against people we already want to drone strike? ..." Collateral damage? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan http://rt.com/usa/drone-yemen-dozens-dead-880/ http://rt.com/usa/drone-yemen-dozens-dead-880/ Signature strikes are particularly troublesome. The level of identification is lower. Identification is replaced by behaviour. Less verification translates to greater efficiency. Where is the accountability? In Vietnam, the Pinkville massacre [0] occurred where approximately 500 unarmed civilians were killed. A cover-up attempt was made. When it became public, accountability became a necessity. The participants were questioned. There was dissent. Enough Men (grunts) on the ground not being fired on, refused to kill civilians [1] resulting in political embarrassment to both Nixon and the military. The Military learns and got smart. You don't need to invade like the old days or have SF's on the ground for man in the loop missions. You can do all this from a tin sheds on home soil using remote drones. The control loop is smaller, the job gets done. No dissenters with only unverified reporting of collateral damage and no messy pictures in TIME-LIFE. [0] http://life.time.com/history/my-lai-remembering-an-american-atrocity-in-vietnam-march-1968/ http://life.time.com/history/my-lai-remembering-an-american-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre#Participants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre#Participants
- sneak 12y ago
  You said: "Though I wish Assange wouldn't continue confusing and deceiving people by claiming these companies sell your information to advertisers." To quote the article: "They collect a vast amount of information about people, store it, integrate it and use it to predict individual and group behavior, which they then sell to advertisers and others." I am saying now: They use that information to make predictions, which are sold to advertisers. That statement is true.
  - cromwellian 12y ago
    They don't sell predictions to advertisers either, they sell real estate, plain and simple. You say you want to buy space when a german speaking person searches for Wine on the search engine, and a slot on the results page is allocated for you. Can you give me the phone number of the sales representative that I can call to buy a prediction? The only predictions AdWords does is predict the likely volume of impressions/clicks you'll get.
    - MacsHeadroom 12y ago
      You just described selling predictions. Google is predicting that the person speaks German or is a Male between the ages of 26-30 who is interested in Technology and Wine-making, or what have you. Google sells "we can display your add to someone we predict meets such and such criteria." They make those predictions based on gathered data. The prediction is what makes a million AdWords views more valuable than a million random people seeing the same content in a tweet. Both are "real estate." But it's the predictions (based on gathered data) that make AdWords more valuable.
- sneak 12y ago
  You said: "Though I wish Assange wouldn't continue confusing and deceiving people by claiming these companies sell your information to advertisers." To quote the article: "They collect a vast amount of information about people, store it, integrate it and use it to predict individual and group behavior, which they then sell to advertisers and others." I am saying now: They use that information to make predictions, which are sold to advertisers. That statement is true.
- alexqgb 12y ago
  The NSA may not arrest people directly, but considered in relation to other agencies, their work becomes distinctly sinister (e.g. "You track 'em we whack 'em" with regard to the CIA). The practice of collaborating with the FBI on "parallel reconstruction" in order to convincingly lie about the sources of evidence presented in court cuts even closer to he very dark heart of the matter.
webjprgm 12y ago
Are we saying the power to cause harm is what makes surveillance bad? Google has the authority to blacklist webpages so that they drop off Google search results and destroy the income of those websites.
- dublinben 12y ago
  Beyond income even, if you can't find a site on Google, it may as well not even exist. Regulators in China and the EU are so focused on censoring search results, because they know it's the most efficient way to control information.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  Google has the power to decide what it will display to you on its own webpage?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tn13 12y ago
Google can not take my information unless I give to them willingly which I do because they are offering something useful in return. NSA on other hand draws a salary by taking away 30% of my income from me.
baddox 12y ago
Google also isn't (mostly) funded by taxes. It makes sense to be more concerned with what someone does with my money than what they do with their own money.
- twobits 12y ago
  It may not have to do with your money, but it has to do with your life. And the future of society too.
- te_chris 12y ago
  I'm just never going to understand libertarians.
  - baddox 12y ago
    The desire to control or at least oversee the money that you earn is, as far as I know, not a specifically libertarian desire. Do you not understand the desire?
    - te_chris 12y ago
      The refusal to acknowledge that taxes are the legitimate cost of living in a nation is a distinctly libertarian characteristic.
      - baddox 12y ago
        I don't deny that some level of taxation is probably inevitable in modern Western society, at least without some sort of major paradigm shift. I'm not sure it needs to be a personal income tax, and I'm quite confident it doesn't need to be anywhere near as complicated as it is in the USA. I also think taxes could be much lower without significant societal changes or sacrifices, and I think it's very reasonable to be concerned at how my taxes are used. Anyway, whether or not my views constitute a belief that taxes are not "legitimate" is a largely semantic question. The very notion of legitimacy borders on moral arguments, which I try to refrain from making. I could point to some distinctly libertarian arguments for the morality of taxation, some of which seem convincing if taken on their own terms, but that's not really my thing.
freshflowers 12y ago
You don't have to arrest people to break them. You don't even have to touch them, or be on the same continent. That's the essential "evil" of total surveillance: knowing is already enough to effectively take most people's freedom away. You don't even have to threaten or blackmail. As long as they know you know all about them, you can control 99% of the population. Blunt instruments like internment and torture are just tools. The essence of repression is fear, and fear of information will do just as well as fear of internment or violence. Put such power into the hands of mere mortals, and it really doesn't matter if those mortals represent corporations or nation states.
- cryoshon 12y ago
  Your observation on the essence of repression is quite prescient. I might add that Americans are notorious for being wracked by fear/anxiety as a result of their mainstream media and lack of societal safety net.
- lukifer 12y ago
  If the greatest warrior is the one that need never fight (due to a perceived predetermined outcome), then the most oppressive despotic regime is the one that need never oppress.
blfr 12y ago
Also, Google seems just as useful and accurate on a public computer, or a friend's laptop, as on my own (Android) phone. I read somewhere that user input, location, and searches immediately before do all the heavy lifting when it comes to returning good results, whether organic or ads. And it rings true when you use Google. Frankly, I don't think they have actually figured out how to use all that personal info for anything (yet?).

mike_hearn 12y ago

The NSA cannot arrest people either. Hence the big hoohaa about whether they were tipping off the people who can. A bigger problem is not the NSA leading to arrests. The bigger problem is metadata driven drone strikes. That's a uniquely horrible phenomenon. Google and Facebook look like fluffy kittens in contrast. Though I wish Assange wouldn't continue confusing and deceiving people by claiming these companies sell your information to advertisers. I don't understand how such a trivially debunked idea has turned into a global meme/conspiracy theory.

webjprgm 12y ago
Google/Facebook don't have to sell your info to advertisers because the are advertisers. Either way it is used for commercial advantage.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  Yes, but so what? Would you prefer everyone had to pay for their services, meaning a) You need a credit card, excluding large chunks of the world population that doesn't have one b) Google/FB learn your real identity via the payment networks, verified to banking level I get that advertising is annoying. Regardless, painting it as some kind of scary privacy problem doesn't make sense and worse, muddies the water. People end up dumping tech companies into the same boat as governments even though they have hardly anything in common.
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    It's more than annoying. It is a privacy problem. I would prefer people run their own services, decentralised. The tech companies are useful idiots.
    - robertfw 12y ago
      I think that we will get there eventually, but there is still plenty of work to be done - for it to work it needs to be mass market, which means it needs to Just Work. One project I've been meaning to delve into is https://sandstorm.io/ https://sandstorm.io/
  - tracker1 12y ago
    It's pretty creepy, when I look at a product on Amazon, and see SOME_PERSON that I follow on facebook/twitter posted a review of this item fairly prominently. I've never attached my twitter profile, or facebook profile to Amazon, but there it is/was. That's pretty damned creepy.
  - Omniusaspirer 12y ago
    I think it's outright dishonest to paint advertising as not a privacy problem. It's a huge portion of why ones every online movement is tracked in the first place. Google's entire gimmick is that they're better at stalking people than any other tech company on the planet, without "targeted" advertising they'd have long been irrelevant. Also, claiming you need a credit card to do things online is a great example of "not making sense and muddying the water". If Google/FB charged for their services there's still no reason they would need my address or any other identifying information- it's not like they're sending boxes to my door. On your last point; Tech companies and governments get put in the same boat for good reason- they actively work together on a regular basis. Even if the company is "compelled" to give the info- that's still only an issue because the companies are whoring and storing all the data they can get their hands on (for indefinite amounts of time).
- declan 12y ago
  Google and Facebook offer platforms to advertisers. For instance, Facebook lets advertisers show ads to users of age X, working at company Y, in location Z, etc. (without disclosing their identities). This is completely different from selling your information, and the companies' privacy policies and practices reflect this. As mike_hearn says, these sorts of alarmist claims ("they're selling your info!") are easily debunked. And in this case they detract from the rest of Julian's essay, which is a shame because elsewhere he makes some good points.
avoutthere 12y ago
> metadata driven drone strikes How many of these have there been?
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  Nobody knows of course, but more than one for sure. The key words to use are "signature strike": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/signature-strikes-and-the_b_3575351.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/signature-s... https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secre... http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-gr...
chestnut-tree 12y ago
Google and Facebook may not sell personally identifiable information to advertisers, but they track users relentlessly and insatiably. Google, in particular, has it's tracking tentacles in every conceivable corner of the web: whether it's tracking school kids through Google Classroom, or tracking users through the entirety of an OS (ChromeOS), or tracking your behaviour on your Android smartphone - the list is endless. No, I don't think they do sinsiter things with your data but they have amassed (and continue to amass) an absolutely gargantuan volume of date about users. What Facebook and Google collect about you far exceeds a simple "advertising profile" of your likes. They know more about your online behaviour than you do. I've said this before, but Google omits basic facts in their privacy policy about the data they collect about you. Things like: how long they keep your data, whether the data is anonymised, whether your searches or activity are disassociated from your identity, and who sees your data inside the company. These are not minor or unreasonable questions to ask - they are exactly what you'd expect to find in a privacy policy (especially from a company that arguably tracks users more than anyone else online). Yet, Google does not answer any of these questions. Why do they get a free pass?
- Stefanrio 12y ago
  > Why do they get a free pass? Because technology evolves faster than humans and most people have no idea what the services that they use are about.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  I guess it's a question of perspective. In the past few years I've been working a lot on Bitcoin, so I've become quite familiar with how the banking world works and what they collect and track about you. If you really think Google and Facebook "track users relentlessly and insatiably" then I suggest you take a deep breath, and then go review what banks do in the name of anti-money laundering. It makes social networks look like quasi anarchist chaos camps. I mean, you can tell Google and Facebook your name is literally anything - they aren't going to check. They barely even care beyond trying to nudge you away from picking pinkponies_78, so the search function works. Google isn't going to suddenly suspend your email account and demand you provide documentary proof of where your business is getting its income. WRT this: Google omits basic facts in their privacy policy about the data they collect about you I don't think they do: http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ Just go read that page and it covers a huge number of topics including things like "who sees your data inside the company". I'm sure you would want even more info, but these sites represent a trade off - earlier privacy policies were dinged (by governments, lol) for being too large and complex.
rhino369 12y ago
>A bigger problem is not the NSA leading to arrests. The bigger problem is metadata driven drone strikes. That's a uniquely horrible phenomenon. What is so horrible about using metadata to target drone strikes against people we already want to drone strike? That is just good intelligence collection.
- yebyen 12y ago
  I suspect I'm going to get downvoted too, for saying it like this, but you obviously haven't seen any of the latest season of Homeland.
  - rhino369 12y ago
    I wish I hadn't, this season is bad.
    - yebyen 12y ago
      Yeah I'm with you on that, for the first couple of episodes I wasn't even convinced that it was really the same show... feels like a spinoff since they killed Brody
- cesarbs 12y ago
  Read this and think about what you said: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/signature-strikes-and-the_b_3575351.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/signature-s...
- bootload 12y ago
  "... What is so horrible about using metadata to target drone strikes against people we already want to drone strike? ..." Collateral damage? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan http://rt.com/usa/drone-yemen-dozens-dead-880/ http://rt.com/usa/drone-yemen-dozens-dead-880/ Signature strikes are particularly troublesome. The level of identification is lower. Identification is replaced by behaviour. Less verification translates to greater efficiency. Where is the accountability? In Vietnam, the Pinkville massacre [0] occurred where approximately 500 unarmed civilians were killed. A cover-up attempt was made. When it became public, accountability became a necessity. The participants were questioned. There was dissent. Enough Men (grunts) on the ground not being fired on, refused to kill civilians [1] resulting in political embarrassment to both Nixon and the military. The Military learns and got smart. You don't need to invade like the old days or have SF's on the ground for man in the loop missions. You can do all this from a tin sheds on home soil using remote drones. The control loop is smaller, the job gets done. No dissenters with only unverified reporting of collateral damage and no messy pictures in TIME-LIFE. [0] http://life.time.com/history/my-lai-remembering-an-american-atrocity-in-vietnam-march-1968/ http://life.time.com/history/my-lai-remembering-an-american-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre#Participants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre#Participants
sneak 12y ago
You said: "Though I wish Assange wouldn't continue confusing and deceiving people by claiming these companies sell your information to advertisers." To quote the article: "They collect a vast amount of information about people, store it, integrate it and use it to predict individual and group behavior, which they then sell to advertisers and others." I am saying now: They use that information to make predictions, which are sold to advertisers. That statement is true.
- cromwellian 12y ago
  They don't sell predictions to advertisers either, they sell real estate, plain and simple. You say you want to buy space when a german speaking person searches for Wine on the search engine, and a slot on the results page is allocated for you. Can you give me the phone number of the sales representative that I can call to buy a prediction? The only predictions AdWords does is predict the likely volume of impressions/clicks you'll get.
  - MacsHeadroom 12y ago
    You just described selling predictions. Google is predicting that the person speaks German or is a Male between the ages of 26-30 who is interested in Technology and Wine-making, or what have you. Google sells "we can display your add to someone we predict meets such and such criteria." They make those predictions based on gathered data. The prediction is what makes a million AdWords views more valuable than a million random people seeing the same content in a tweet. Both are "real estate." But it's the predictions (based on gathered data) that make AdWords more valuable.
sneak 12y ago
You said: "Though I wish Assange wouldn't continue confusing and deceiving people by claiming these companies sell your information to advertisers." To quote the article: "They collect a vast amount of information about people, store it, integrate it and use it to predict individual and group behavior, which they then sell to advertisers and others." I am saying now: They use that information to make predictions, which are sold to advertisers. That statement is true.
alexqgb 12y ago
The NSA may not arrest people directly, but considered in relation to other agencies, their work becomes distinctly sinister (e.g. "You track 'em we whack 'em" with regard to the CIA). The practice of collaborating with the FBI on "parallel reconstruction" in order to convincingly lie about the sources of evidence presented in court cuts even closer to he very dark heart of the matter.

webjprgm 12y ago

Are we saying the power to cause harm is what makes surveillance bad? Google has the authority to blacklist webpages so that they drop off Google search results and destroy the income of those websites.

dublinben 12y ago
Beyond income even, if you can't find a site on Google, it may as well not even exist. Regulators in China and the EU are so focused on censoring search results, because they know it's the most efficient way to control information.
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
Google has the power to decide what it will display to you on its own webpage?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tn13 12y ago

Google can not take my information unless I give to them willingly which I do because they are offering something useful in return. NSA on other hand draws a salary by taking away 30% of my income from me.

baddox 12y ago

Google also isn't (mostly) funded by taxes. It makes sense to be more concerned with what someone does with my money than what they do with their own money.

twobits 12y ago
It may not have to do with your money, but it has to do with your life. And the future of society too.
te_chris 12y ago
I'm just never going to understand libertarians.
- baddox 12y ago
  The desire to control or at least oversee the money that you earn is, as far as I know, not a specifically libertarian desire. Do you not understand the desire?
  - te_chris 12y ago
    The refusal to acknowledge that taxes are the legitimate cost of living in a nation is a distinctly libertarian characteristic.
    - baddox 12y ago
      I don't deny that some level of taxation is probably inevitable in modern Western society, at least without some sort of major paradigm shift. I'm not sure it needs to be a personal income tax, and I'm quite confident it doesn't need to be anywhere near as complicated as it is in the USA. I also think taxes could be much lower without significant societal changes or sacrifices, and I think it's very reasonable to be concerned at how my taxes are used. Anyway, whether or not my views constitute a belief that taxes are not "legitimate" is a largely semantic question. The very notion of legitimacy borders on moral arguments, which I try to refrain from making. I could point to some distinctly libertarian arguments for the morality of taxation, some of which seem convincing if taken on their own terms, but that's not really my thing.

freshflowers 12y ago

You don't have to arrest people to break them. You don't even have to touch them, or be on the same continent. That's the essential "evil" of total surveillance: knowing is already enough to effectively take most people's freedom away. You don't even have to threaten or blackmail. As long as they know you know all about them, you can control 99% of the population. Blunt instruments like internment and torture are just tools. The essence of repression is fear, and fear of information will do just as well as fear of internment or violence. Put such power into the hands of mere mortals, and it really doesn't matter if those mortals represent corporations or nation states.

cryoshon 12y ago
Your observation on the essence of repression is quite prescient. I might add that Americans are notorious for being wracked by fear/anxiety as a result of their mainstream media and lack of societal safety net.
lukifer 12y ago
If the greatest warrior is the one that need never fight (due to a perceived predetermined outcome), then the most oppressive despotic regime is the one that need never oppress.

blfr 12y ago

Also, Google seems just as useful and accurate on a public computer, or a friend's laptop, as on my own (Android) phone. I read somewhere that user input, location, and searches immediately before do all the heavy lifting when it comes to returning good results, whether organic or ads. And it rings true when you use Google. Frankly, I don't think they have actually figured out how to use all that personal info for anything (yet?).